Hardlines partnered with the Licking County Historical Society in 2025 to bring new momentum to treasured Newark landmark, the Buckingham Meeting House. The 1835 building now houses the Society’s Library & Archives and serves as a banquet facility. HDC’s detailed cost estimate to guide improvements helped secure a $250,000 state grant. HDC is now serving as criteria architect, alongside Karpinski Engineering as the criteria MEP engineer, to prepare documents for a design-build team to be selected later this year.
Buckingham Meeting House during initial fieldwork in February 2025
HDC has a decades-long legacy of preservation work in Licking County. In the late 1990s, the firm helped save and transform the Davis-Shai House in Heath. HDC’s feasibility study for the relocated historic home helped secure a $500,000 state capital grant to rehabilitate the structure into a community center. HDC also supported the Licking County Historical Society with a Conservation Assessment Program (CAP) survey of the 1828 Sherwood Davidson House in Newark.
Left: Davis-Shai House after rehabilitation in 2000; Right: Sherwood Davidson House during fieldwork in 1998
In 1998-1999, HDC completed ADA improvements to a group home in Newark for the Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities (now Ohio Department of Behavioral Health) and Newark Resident Homes. The project consisted of dividing a large room on the first floor into an accessible bedroom and bathroom along with adding a wheelchair ramp to the first floor. The original plan was for a simple ramp from the rear parking lot to a new door in the dining room bay window. The facilities manager did not like the idea of giving up the bay window and also noted that many residents were picked up at the front door, not the parking lot. HDC design a new ramp to a new deck at the front door with a seating area at the ramp landing.
New ramp and deck in 1999
Beyond historic buildings, HDC has completed archaeological surveys across Licking County, beginning with its first Ohio Department of Transportation cultural resources project in 1998. More recently, HDC prepared a feasibility study for the Robbins Hunter Museum, an 1842 historic home reflecting generations of local history and philanthropy. From preservation planning to accessibility and archaeology, HDC’s work in Licking County demonstrates a sustained commitment to honoring the past while building a stronger future.
Side entrance to the Robbins Hunter Museum with clock tower where a bust of Victoria Woodhull that appears on the balcony on the hour
Buckingham Meeting House during initial fieldwork in February 2025
